


horribly rotten

by 666minghao



Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe, SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Based on Heathers, Dark Comedy, Eating Disorders, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:06:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22502992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/666minghao/pseuds/666minghao
Summary: minghao just wants to finish his senior year of high school. the lees’ make that hard for him. but the new boy helps him go out with a bang.
Relationships: Chwe Hansol | Vernon & Xu Ming Hao | The8, Lee Chan | Dino/Lee Jihoon | Woozi/Lee Seokmin | DK
Kudos: 6





	horribly rotten

**Author's Note:**

> a ha ha
> 
> i haven’t posted in like what ?? two years ?? so hopefully this is a good ‘comeback’ for me i’m so sorry

_ september 1st, 1996 _

minghao xu swears softly to himself as he trips over a carefully placed backpack. his glasses shift, and he reaches a hand up to adjust them.

“watch it, geek!” a voice resounds from behind him, and he picks up his pace down the crowded hallway. with his eyes trained on the linoleum tile floors, he doesn’t notice the boy standing before him until he knocks right into him.

“ugh, pay attention!” a familiar voice scolds. minghao gulps and tilts his head up to see joshua hong staring at him in disgust, and his lackey junhui wen directly behind him with a hand on his shoulder and a smirk upon his face. “thought glasses would help you see better, four-eyes.”

“yeah, four-eyes,” junhui repeats, sneering.

minghao stays silent and attempts to walk past the two, but he's stopped by a tight grip on his shoulder.

“are you blind  _ and _ deaf, dumbass?” joshua asks, nose scrunching up. “or are you just fucking brain dead?”

“if i was brain dead, i’d be failing all my classes like you,” minghao says.

well, what he starts to say, anyways, before joshua shoves him to the floor. he gets cut off right after “my.”

“fucking nerd.” and with that, joshua walks off with junhui trailing behind.

minghao hears snickers throughout the hallway as he struggles to pick himself up. he sniffles a bit, wiping grime from the linoleum floor off his baby blue sweater cuffs when long legs in a pair of bootcut jeans appears in front of him and an open hand reaches down to help him up.

“come on, hao,” mingyu kim mumbles to the boy, “i gotcha.”

minghao rises to his feet with the assistance of the taller and he feels the boy squeeze his hand before letting go. mingyu fixes minghao’s glasses for him, grinning softly as he does so. “thank you,” minghao whispers, the corner of his mouth turning up slightly.

“no worries,” mingyu replies. he smiles broadly, and his canine teeth stick out, along with a small snaggletooth. his mom promised him braces to fix it years back but he never got them; he doesn’t mind it, though.

they walk together in silence towards the mess hall for lunch. minghao’s tin lunch box rattles with every step they take. he opts to wait for mingyu to get his lunch at their usual shared table rather than awkwardly wait near the lunch lady marking down ids this time. the lid to his lunch box clatters against the surface of the table, but the sound is drowned out by the chatter of the other high schoolers, and he reaches inside to grab the chicken salad sandwich and hi-c juice box he packed the night before.

not too long after mingyu arrives to the table and minghao takes his first bite, there’s loud yelling coming from across the cramped cafeteria. mingyu turns to face the noise, and minghao cranes his neck over to see what’s going on.

“the hell's happening?” he asks under his breath, brows furrowing as he squints.

“i think it’s seokmin again,” mingyu groans, rolling his eyes and taking a bite of the slab of meatloaf he got from the hot lunch line. he scoops up a spoonful of lumpy mashed potatoes as he chews. “our  _ dear leader _ must have something important to talk to his subjects about,” he drawls sarcastically, mouth full, before he swallows down the meat and shoves the full spoon into his mouth.

“attention, everyone!” a voice calls out from the front of the room. to mingyu and minghao’s surprise, its  _ chan _ lee, instead of seokmin lee. chan has on a forest green beret and black turtleneck tucked into his light wash blue jeans, the chain clipped onto his belt loops jingling slightly as he moves. a thick, black leather belt is cinched tightly around his waist, accentuating the smallness of it. his black doc martens make a  _ clunk _ sound against the plastic stools as he uses them to step onto the table in front of him. 

mingyu rolls his eyes again and turns back around to continue eating, but minghao keeps his attention on the boy across the room.

“tomorrow is picture day!” he yells.  _ of course, chan’s the yearbook club president _ . “come to school in your best wares! seniors, portraits are thursday and friday. i organized the class by time and day, the list is posted on the bulletin board by the office!” he ends with a grin. his single dangling earring catches the light as he steps down from the table, the emerald stone at the end casting a pinpoint of green light wherever it points towards. a tanned arm reaches out to help him down, and it’s connected to the one and only seokmin lee.

seokmin’s eyes shine as all the natural light streaming in through the windows seems to focus on him. the ruby stone on his black ring stands out and the sunlight bounces off of it, seeming to glow, casting an aura about him. his outfit is quite plain today, just a slightly baggy red t-shirt tucked into black jeans tucked into a pair of hi-top red converse. a grin is plastered onto his face and he says something quickly to chan that leaves the boy’s face drained of color. a hand reaches out to tug on his shirt sleeve, and he turns to see jihoon lee behind him.

jihoon stands meekly to the side of the two, motioning for the both of them to hop into the hot lunch line with him since the line is shorter now. his mustard colored sweater is baggy, oversized on him as it drapes over most of his body, stopping at the middle of his thighs and just reaches the first rips on his black skinny jeans. there’s a faint squeak sound you can hear from his new white vans skidding across the floor around the cafeteria. a citrine pendant hangs on a thin silver chain around his neck, and he fiddles with it between his fingers as he speaks.

“um, earth to minghao?” a hand waves in front of minghao’s face and he jumps. he looks up to see seungkwan boo leaning over the table towards him. minghao blinks before giving out a nervous chuckle. “zoned out again?” seungkwan turns around to see what he was staring so intently at before his nose scrunches as his eyes land upon seokmin.

“the lee’s? really?” seungkwan asks, and mingyu scoffs, rolling his eyes once more.  _ your eyes are going to roll out your head if you keep going _ , minghao wants to tell him.

“i just zoned out, like you said,” minghao mumbles, taking a bite of his sandwich. he sighs. “you ever wonder what it’s like to be as popular as one of them?”

mingyu clicks his tongue. “can’t be too great. half the school hates them.” a pause. “me included.”

“i agree with ‘gyu,” seungkwan adds, nodding. “plus there’s all these expectations at the top of the food chain. can’t deal with that. i can barely get past my classes.” he chuckles softly.

minghao pouts and mingyu mocks him. “wipe that shit off your face,” he says.

“but i mean,” minghao starts, “it’d be nice to not have to deal with all the other popular kids fucking with us. like joshua and junhui.” his eyes narrow as he looks in the direction of their lunch table, spotting joshua flip a freshman’s skirt up over their ass, followed by raucous laughter. “god, i hate the football team.”

“so does everyone with a brain,” mingyu drawls, looking over at the table and wrinkling his nose. “they don’t even win our games.”

seungkwan elbows mingyu in the side. “h-hey, they won against west villa, huh?” his eyes drift towards junhui.

“yeah, by a  _ field goal _ . the game was 6-3, kwan,” minghao complained before following seungkwan’s line of sight. he chuckles softly. “okay, lover boy. won’t talk about your crush like that.”

“hey!” seungkwan protests, eyebrows furrowing and lips forming a small pout. “shut up, it’s not like i  _ love _ him or anything.”

“still like the piece of shit, though,” mingyu points out. seungkwan punches his arm.

“getting off the topic of my  _ love life _ …” seungkwan stresses the last two words. he ignores the “nonexistent” that mingyu coughs out. “have y’all sorted out where you’re going for college?”

minghao draws a blank. “i don’t know yet…” he trails off. “dad wants me to go to an ivy, but that’s a lot of money.”

“with your scores?” mingyu quirks a brow. “minghao, you can go just about anywhere you want. your gpa is great too! your family’s rich anyways.”

“not necessarily.”

“just go for it,” seungkwan pushes. he gives the boy a smile. “if all else fails, you can still apply to the state university. that’s where i’ll be anyways.”

mingyu throws his arm across seungkwan’s shoulders and nods in agreement. “me too.”

minghao shrugs and eats the last of his sandwich in silence as mingyu and seungkwan bicker over something he just knows is dumb. his eyes scan over the mess hall as he takes a long swig from his juice box. they land on a boy on the other side of the cafeteria, someone he doesn’t recognize.

he’s dressed in all black, save for the light grey t-shirt minghao can see peeking from under his charcoal hoodie. his dark brown hair shades his eyes as he chats idly with a girl who just walked by his table, twirling a lock of ginger hair around her index finger. his face is scrunched slightly, like whatever she’s saying is putting a bad taste in his mouth. his chin rests against his hand as he forces himself through the conversation; minghao can practically feel his disinterest.

the boy’s eyes flick up and dart across the mess hall to land on minghao before they widen, the latter quickly turning away to join mingyu and seungkwan’s conversation, which just happens to be focused on methods of helping seungkwan memorize the first fifty elements of the periodic table for a quiz the next day.

the boy grins.


End file.
